Yesterday, when I was working (again) on Tsvetaeva’s cycle of poems called “The disciple”, a sudden idea crossed my mind, that the addressee of the cycle was a complete mystery to me. It was quite interesting, because of personal spirit of the poems.

According to the cycle, Marina is someone’s devoted disciple, an eager follower, even an apostle. She deeply admires her spiritual leader and worships this unknown person as a god. There are motives of self-denial and self-sacrifice,...

Hello again. Since Quincy hijacked my thread on the Staff forum, I decided to post to my blog instead.

Hello again! Yesterday I heard Micheal O'Siadhail at the "Poets' Landscapes & Sense of Place" panel read one of the most beautiful poems of place I have ever heard, "October" by Patrick Kavanagh. Hope someone can find a link and post it. He spoke about parochial vs. provincial place posme, and read three of his own cityscapes - on Dublin, London and new York....

On Radio 4 the news from the U.S. is of proposals to raise taxes for the wealthy and close tax loopholes, all measures bitterly opposed by populist politicians. This highlights for me the clinical accuracy of the state of the American mind described in The Pale King. I set off to get to work for seven through the quiet, empty streets. My working shift is a mix of routine tasks (medication, helping people get organised, electronic note-recording), and a weave of narratives,...

As some of you may know, I am originally from Liverpool, England. I have lived in the United States on and off, mostly on, since January 21, 1955, having come to the U.S. with my mother on board the Cunard liner Saxonia, met by my father who had emigrated to this country the previous September getting a position as a physical therapist at a medical facility called in CRI in Reisterstown, Maryland, that I am told was the forerunner of Baltimore's Kennedy Kreiger Institute (not sure what CRI stood...

My father and mother, Gordon and Yoria George, on their wedding day, at St. Anne's Church, Aigburth, Liverpool, February 22, 1945. Dad is wearing the uniform of a corporal in the Royal Air Force Medical Corps.